The Mongols are lower classes of wandering pastors of Central Asias entered the history tardily and remained a long time with the drag of the Turkish powers which divided the steppe. They constituted in XIIIe century a transitory empire which, gathering the essence of Eurasia, vastest will ever be made up and one of the elements releases of the passage of the Middle Ages to the modern world. Extended of the lake Baïkal to north with the loop of the Yellow River in the south, of the Khingan mounts in the east with the lake Balkhach in the west, the Mongolian unit can be presented like an immense arid basin (Gobi), of which the useful part is rejected with the periphery.
Mongolia is thus a hollow space surrounded by a constellation of rival tribes and khanats. The fragments of Mongolia federate within an expansive and hegemonic empire, where the fight for the power is accompanied by cyclic rebellions which drive out the defeated on the borders of steppes, before seeing them breaking on the agrarian companies. The crown of Mongolian space is cut up by its neighbors, supported on the basis of their own geopolitical space back.
Prehistory with the history
From Ordos, the man starts to populate Mongolia towards 100 ' 000 front J. - C., carrying traditional a paleolithic means. A second current of settlement resulting from the piémonts of the Central Asia follows and converges with the precedent to develop with the paleolithic superior of the cultures based on the predation of the large herbivores of the cold grassy steppes. The men then form sedentary, rich communities of technical inventions (switches, for example) and esthetics (figurative sculpture), whose certain topics are always of everyday usage.
Towards 10 ' 000, climate warming modifies the medium (development of forests and a moderate fauna moreover small size) and disperses the men in mobile small groups in the mountainous areas, archaeologically difficult to seize before the culture of Padkhinskaïa (4500-3500). The acquisition of diversified techniques of survival authorizes a certain sedentarisation close to the rivers, then supports the passage to a saving in production. This advance is located, to remain within the framework of the cultures of the surroundings of the lake Baïkal, with the first ceramics of Isakovo (3500-3000), the polished stone fish-soft foods of Serovo (3000-2500), the hooks of Kitoï (2500-1700), the metallurgy of the copper of Glaskovo (1700-1200), the bronze of Chivera (1200-I thousand-year-old er).
Pastoral tribes
In parallel, Mongolia is reached by the Indo-European pastoral communities come from Ukraine through the steppe band which borders the Siberian forest; their culture of Afanassievo (3000 to 1700) evolves to Andronovo (1700 to 1200), where the seminomadism develops, to give, as the steppes become arid, culture of the bronze of Karasouk, or Qarasuk (1200 to 700), which adopts the riding nomadism, creates the drawn travelling house by oxen and the circular yurt.
The pastoral companies are restructured then in militarily organized tribes which clash for the control of the pastures. During first half of thousand-year-old Ier, native-born people of forest and mountainous Mongolia, ethnos groups Turkish, Mongolian, paléosibériennes and toungouses, join with this cultural model. Mongolia enters the history; this one can be divided into 400 years periods, gathered in three great 800 years phases.
Of VIIe century before J. - C. in IIe century after J. - C.
This phase is defined by reference to Xiongnu - the Huns futures of the Occident -, which appear with the first culture of the specific bronze of Mongolia, that of the tombs with flagstones, during which native-born people spread themselves in the steppe. This géoculturel unit is achieved by the establishment of a vague confederation of these tribes in perpetual ethnic and territorial redefinition, and whose secular dream will be to fix the peripheral agrarian companies (starting with China) and caravan trade route.
The second period of this phase begins with the question from political control from this confederation, with the example of what occurred in China (foundation of the Chinese Empire in 221). A group of Xiongnu - probably of the Turkish populations originally framed by theSiberian ones - assumes a role directing in the confederation starting from the end of the III E century, and affirms its hegemony while absorbing or by driving out in front of him the Indo-Europeans, then while attacking the Chinese Empire. This one will spend several centuries to move away the threat, building the Great wall, assembling counter-raids, poking the civil wars, and finally encouraging the revolt of vassal of Xiongnu, Xianbei (155).
Of IIe century with Xe century
Then open the second great phase of the history of Mongolia, during which populations, essentially of Turkish and Mongolian languages, clash to affirm their prevalence in the steppe. They are initially the Xianbei Proto-Mongols who exert it, during nearly two hundred years, before being taken out of clipper, in second half of the IV E century, by a Turkish group of Altaï in revolt and other Proto-Mongols of the Manchu borders, Ruanruan.
Those, at the beginning of the O C century, assert an imperial position which they will keep during one century and half before being reversed by the coalition of their vassal Turkish of high Orkhon, Tujue, with the former Tabghatchs Barbarians, who had founded in China of North the dynasty of Wei (552). Second half of this phase sees the domination of Turkish populations whose open character and relative pacifism authorize certain cultural developments: do adoption of Christianity nestorien, writing sogdienne, etc follow one another Tujue thus, then Oghouz directed by the clans ouïgours which dominate until 840, date on which they are driven out of Mongolia by other Turks (or turquized Indo-Europeans?), the Kyrgyz. The latter will very quickly be driven out by Mongolian people, Khitan (920).
Xe at the XVIIIe century
This rupture is at the origin of the third phase of the history of Mongolia, that where the turcophonie with the profit disappears from the final return of the Mongols. The first period corresponds to a long phase of disorders in central Mongolia, abandoned with the competitions of independent tribes.
Contrary, the junction of Mongolia and China of North follow one another of the wandering empires in the process of sedentarisation and sinicization. The first is that of Khitan, which founds the Liao dynasty, but they are demolished in 1125 by Jürchen, groups origin toungouse which takes the name of Jin (“gold Dynasty”). But this kingdom is annexed in 1234 by the Mongols.